You are here

At a time when other metropolitan cities are not getting enough water supply due to breakdown in the pipeline network, on the other hand, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has been giving presentations to other urban local bodies on how its water department saved Rs 6 crore last year on the electricity bill.

AMC’s water department gives credit to Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) not only for the saving but also for utilizing 23 million liter per day (MLD) water that was going to waste.

“The project includes monitoring of water quantity, quality and energy parameters of 148 water distribution centers, four french wells and four water treatment plants. We will add 51 water distribution centers in the system,” says Jagdish Patel, City Engineer. He added, “After one-year monitoring on the system, we found that we have saved Rs 6 crore as electricity bill and also utilized 23 MLD water, which was being wasted.”

Biren Raval, Additional Chief Engineer, said, “The unit here works round the clock. We monitor all the water stations attached to the system. There is an automatic message and automatic alarm for any trouble which fixes the problem in a couple of minutes. With the online system, we have recently introduced automated valve operating system."

He added, “It will prevent discrepancies and solve water deficiency. If the water tank is filled, the valve will be closed automatically. No manual operations will be required unless there is some technical fault.”

Still, there is a problem of inadequate water supply to the end user. One of the engineers said, “SCADA system monitors only measure and gives an audit of water distribution centers and treatment plant. There is no audit from water distribution centers to the end users. Many of the walled city areas have water pipelines which are more than 40 to 50-year-old and leakages occur there.”